“We’ve opened a door to hell” at Fukushima plant, and may never be able to close it

We’ve got 3 reactors, the cores have left the vessel. They’ve burned
through the bottom of the vessel. We don’t really know where they are,
because the radioactive environment even fries robots that Tepco’s been
trying to send in there.

They have been sending very innovative robotic
machinery and sensors in there to get a picture, to get a reading, and
these things don’t return. We have opened a door to hell that cannot be
easily closed — if ever. We’ve got those 3 cores that are melting, they
could be somewhere in the concrete base mat burning their way through,
they could have already burned through and entered into the ground. They
hopefully have formed a huge solid ‘elephant’s foot’ of highly
radioactive material.

Art Bell, host: You mean that even with robotic help, they don’t know where the cores are?Gunter: Correct. We’ve got 3 molten cores that we don’t have a status report on.